The BBC series "Spy In The Wild" uses a very unusual strategy to observe and record how animals behave in their natural environment.

For the show, lifelike robots that look like the animals themselves are put into the group. These robots are equipped with cameras that film the behavior of the real animals. The idea is to find out how the animals behave when they think that they aren't being observed.

But when researchers wanted to study a group of Langur monkeys in Rajasthan, India, something unusual happened.

The robot they used looked like a baby Langur monkey. The real monkeys were curious about their new group member and began approaching it. They started to touch it and poke it in an attempt to get it to play with them.

No one could have expected that this harmless experiment would end up revealing such moving behavior from these Langur monkeys. In the end, the experiment achieved much more than originally intended — it taught us that animals have complex emotions and deep feelings of connection just like we do. It might be difficult to watch, but it's also beautiful at the same time.h/t http://www.hefty.co/